port henderson : past & present - Royal Commission on the Ancient ...

Introduction
This booklet, written as part of Scotland's Rural Past Project, contains as much information about Port
Henderson's <strong>past</strong> and <strong>present</strong> as we have been able to discover. Port Henderson, a former fishing
village and crofting township, is part of the Gairloch Estates and cannot be looked at in isolation.
Therefore it is set in its historical and geographical context within this West Coast are of Ross-shire.
The booklet contains information about Port Henderson's location in the local area, the use of
Gaelic and other name derivations for various features within the landscape, the village within the
fishing industry, the township within the crofting community, schooling over the years and life for
residents and visitors during the 20 th and 21 st centuries.
Some of the data used in this project has been taken from work undertaken by Roy Wentworth.
Roy was a local historian and the first curator of Gairloch’s Heritage Museum. He undertook a great
deal of research about Gairloch and district, taking information from local residents and from books,
articles and maps. His particular interest was Gaelic name derivations. Where a Gaelic name comes
from the OS Reference Name Books for the 1st. edition OS map, 1871 - 1877, this is indicated by the
initials OSR and the initials OPR stand for Old Parochial Registers.
Other information has been supplied by local residents, from Ian Fraser, former lecturer at
Edinburgh University, and gleaned from the Port Henderson censuses and estate records, books and
articles. I have also reproduced some of the more general information about the earlier life and times of
crofting townships which was first written in the booklet Lonemore : Big Damp Meadow.
Acknowledgements
Grateful thanks go to the residents of Port Henderson, both <strong>past</strong> and <strong>present</strong> and too numerous to name
individually, who have so freely given their time to lend photographs and to supply oral and written
information. Without their help this booklet would have been far less interesting. Mairi Wyatt, a pupil
at Gairloch High School and a resident of Port Henderson, gave the project twelve hours of time as part
of her Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme. She was invaluable in gathering together some of the census
statistics.
And last but in no way least, my gratitude goes to Anne MacInnes who masterminded the whole
project and kept me nearly as busy as herself
(More photographs and documents have been placed in the Gairloch Heritage Museum for local
reference).
Dorothy Malone
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